


And Bind Up Every Wandering Tress

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Hair, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-12
Updated: 2005-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like Rapunzel, she will let down her hair, and they can all climb inside her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Bind Up Every Wandering Tress

River's hair is soft and heavy. It knots easily, even when the comb's been run through it before. Simon doesn't have the patience to brush it out every night. River knows this, but she wishes he did.

Kaylee beckons her into Inara's shuttle, and River breathes in the scent of tea, jasmine. Desire. She sits on the bed like a good little doll and lets Inara brush her hair.

"A hundred strokes a night," River says. She enjoys the ritual; it lulls her into peace, the noise of everyone else's thoughts dwindling to a half-heard drone that buzzes like the hum of Serenity's engines under her skin.

Inara smiles, a true smile that reaches her eyes, dark and warm like hot cocoa on a snowy day at home. River remembers sweet warmth on her tongue, in her belly, convinced nothing could ever hurt her. It was one of the few times she's ever been wrong in her life.

"Yes, _mèimei_ , that's right."

"Pretty as a princess," Kaylee says, taking River's hand. Kaylee is still a little scared of her, but she's trying, and River appreciates that. She's a little scared herself. Anyone with half a brain would be -- even Jayne knows that much.

But she doesn't want to be scared anymore. She wants to be well, wants to be whole, wants to smooth the worries from Simon's brow, promise the Captain she'll take care of Serenity, stop the others from looking at her like she's a bomb waiting to go off.

Like Rapunzel, she will let down her hair, and they can all climb inside her. It's the only way she can keep them safe.

*

Kaylee leans back into Inara's gentle touch, enjoying the pull of the brush through her hair, the brief touch of Inara's fingers, being enveloped in her scented white arms. There's a heat building low in her belly, a wetness 'tween her thighs, and she remembers the games the girls used to play back home, kissing and touching, practicing for the boys, they said. Kaylee'd always liked those games, probably more than she should have. Since she was the one always covered in engine grease and sweat, they'd made her the boy most times, and she'd practiced with almost every girl in town. Wasn't the same as going with boys; it didn't make her a slut or a whore.

When the boys started noticing them back, it all stopped, and Kaylee had missed it something fierce, the sweet taste of cherry lip gloss and the feel of slick, pink flesh under her fingers.

She likes boys well enough, hard muscle against her breasts and hard prick inside her quim, but sometimes she misses the softness of girls.

She squirms a little under Inara's touch now, wondering what would happen if she turned in Inara's arms and kissed her, thinking about Inara's soft, white hands moving over her belly, her thighs.

She looks down at her own hands, grease under the nails, skin rough from work, and sighs. Inara's just one more thing she ain't ever going to have.

*

Inara doesn't see herself in the mirror as she runs the brush through her hair. She sees old friends, long gone, girls she knew at the Academy sitting with their heads together, the way River and Kaylee sit on her bed, whispering over all her shiny toys.

River tells Kaylee stories about Simon that make them both giggle until they fall backwards, curling up together like kittens on the smooth red satin of her comforter. Kaylee tells River about some of the adventures she's had on Serenity, before River and Simon joined the crew, before even Inara was around. River drinks them in, eyes shining, and Inara can't help but be entranced as well. She wishes she could know Mal the way Kaylee does, that she could have that easy warmth and love with him, no complications, no harsh words or stinging tears. She wishes she couldn't see the light of infatuation in River's eyes when Kaylee speaks of the Captain, wishes she could save River from that first rejection, and then laughs at herself for her hypocrisy.

Because she pretends not to notice how Kaylee hums with want and need whenever they're together, wanton in her need, yet so shy and so unsure.

When River leaves, Kaylee hangs back, a little awkward, and reaches out to take Inara's hand. Kaylee's hand trembles just a bit, her pink lips parted with shallow breaths, and Inara feels the heat of her hungry gaze, honest longing Inara knows she can't encourage, for as many reasons as there are strokes of the brush.

She gives Kaylee a soft kiss on the cheek, all she _can_ give, and whispers, "Good night, _mèimei_."

Kaylee smiles, rueful and sad, and Inara has to swallow the words that would call her back as she leaves.

*

Wash loves to play with Zoe's hair, run his fingers through it, wrap them up in her curls, and she loves to tease him with it when they make love, sweeping it over his skin like the finest silk money can buy, making him gasp and writhe beneath her, just one more weapon in her arsenal.

She trims it herself, getting rid of split ends and occasionally plucking out stray gray strands, knowing the life they lead means there will only be more and more of those, even if the march of time could be stilled.

During the war, no matter how dirty they got, she always managed to keep her hair free of lice and bugs, to the amazement of the soldiers who surrounded her. She remembers falling ill in the internment camp after Serenity, months of malnutrition and half-healed wounds and deprivations of every sort laying her low. Remembers the Captain holding her hair back as she puked into the basin, nothing but hard bread and thin soup into and then out of her rebellious stomach. Guards had threatened to cut it off when she was feverish; she still hears them in her dreams sometimes, laughing about the rats' nest on her head, matted with filth and blood and vomit, and feels Mal's clumsy fingers trying to smooth it out. She remembers pain, pulling at hair and skin, too tight over sharp bones, and dreams filled with heat and dirt and the copper tang of blood and fear.

When the fever broke, she'd woken to Mal's thin face, haunted eyes full of guarded joy at her recovery, and found her hair tied back in the sloppiest braid she'd ever seen.

"I didn't let them cut it," he'd said as she slowly sat up and the braid, thick as her wrist and rancid from being too long unwashed, flopped over her shoulder.

Her voice had been hoarse when she said, "Thank you, sir," and they both pretended it was because of her illness. They never spoke of it again.

Zoe watches River and Kaylee disappear into Inara's shuttle, and knows she's not part of their magic circle, and she doesn't really want to be. She knows they would let her in -- Inara has more than once complimented her hair, offered to wash and brush it for her -- and Zoe has on rare occasions considered it, if only because the quality of the conversation would be a mite higher. She thinks maybe next time, she'll join them.

end

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Yeats.


End file.
